


The Day No One Died

by RowenaZahnrei



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Planet, Alien Technology, Aliens, Conflict, Gen, TARDIS - Freeform, Temporal Paradox, Temporal Rules, Time Travel, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowenaZahnrei/pseuds/RowenaZahnrei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's more to this universe than one planet, Martha Jones," the Doctor said coldly. "I have to look at the bigger picture. And so do you..." </p><p>A brief, five part story on why, sometimes, you can't go back. Even if you have a time machine. </p><p>COMPLETE STORY!  Please Review! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks! :)

The soldiers were coming.

She could hear them outside, feel the vibration of their heavy boots on the floorboards, the deep thrum of their tanks rolling up the twisting mountain roads.

They were close. Ever closer. Closing in.

Repressing a shudder, the girl licked the tip of her pen and stared off into space, deep in thought. The story was almost over. Her story was almost over. She just had to write the last few lines. She had to think of the best way…

The best way to say goodbye…


	2. Too Late

"We're too late."

Martha Jones looked up at the Doctor's pained face, wincing slightly at the emptiness in his voice, the darkness behind his eyes...

"Well, maybe we don't have to be," she offered. When he glanced at her, she shrugged and attempted a smile, gesturing to the TARDIS standing behind them. "Time machine?" she prompted.

The Doctor stared a moment longer, then turned away. 

"No," he said flatly. "It's too late. We're part of events. Here, at this moment. We can't go back."

Martha frowned.

"Then, what's the point?" she asked. "What's the good of being able to travel to any point in time and space if you can't travel to any point in time and space?"

"You don't understand!" The Doctor spun on her, his brown eyes burning. "Do you think I make this kind of call arbitrarily? Do you think I don't want to go back and stop these idiots from destroying themselves? Their people?"

Martha took a startled step back. 

"Well, no. Of course not. But…but then, what is the TARDIS for?"

The Doctor closed his eyes, shaking his head. 

"Martha, Martha… We go back, we change the present. This moment, this discussion we're having right now will never – can never have happened! Don't you see? If we go back, it would be because of what we've seen here, now. But once we're back there, once we change things, there would be no here and now to prompt us to go back in the first place!"

Martha squidged up her face. 

"No wait, stop," she said. "I'm not following. Don't we want things to be different? Isn't that the point of going back: to change things? To make sure that what happened here never happened in the first place?"

"It's a paradox, Martha!" the Doctor snapped, frustration sharpening his voice like a knife. "The effects could be catastrophic."

"Worse than this?" Martha exclaimed, throwing an arm out to indicate the smoldering wasteland all around them. 

The Doctor refused to look.

"The spacetime continuum is a delicate thing, Martha," he said, his eyes firmly focused on her. "Long ago, my people worked to keep it in balance. But, they're gone. There's no one left now to guide its flow. Only me. And, I can't risk a paradox. Not again. It's too dangerous."

Martha glared.

"So, you're just going to stand here, then," she snapped. "Do nothing. Allow an entire people, an entire planet to die out just because you don't want to upset the balance?"

The Doctor straightened and set his jaw. 

"There's more to this universe than one planet, Martha Jones," the Doctor said coldly. "I have to look at the bigger picture. And so do you."

Martha stared at him. 

"I don't believe this. Bigger picture? Do you know what you sound like?"

"Yes!" he shouted, pacing across the ruined room. "Yes, I know exactly what I sound like! I sound like a Time Lord. Because that's what I am, Martha Jones. The last of the Time Lords. My responsibility extends further than a single planet, or a single species. There's more to my life than gadding about the universe fighting monsters and stopping madmen from reshaping history in their own image! Sometimes, to preserve the timeline, the monsters have to win. Sometimes, good people have to die. Great people. People who could have made a difference, people who could have changed things for the better. People I care about! But, it's not my call. I can't save everybody. In order for the universe to keep going, there are times when it is best not to interfere."

"And, you're so sure this is one of those times?" Martha demanded.

The Doctor shifted his glare to his timeship, his teeth clenched in a snarl. 

"Not me," he growled. "I wasn't the one that landed us here."

Martha narrowed her eyes. 

"But, you— Oh, don't be ridiculous. You can't blame your ship for…"

But the Doctor wasn't listening to Martha Jones. Fists clenched, he slammed through the TARDIS doors and stormed up the metal ramp to the console. 

Martha scurried after him, leaving the doors open on the smoking landscape beyond.

"WHY?" he roared, turning a full circle as he glared around the control room. "Why here, now? Why did you have to land us here?"

There was no audible reply. Martha hadn't expected one. But, the Doctor seemed to slump into himself, sinking into the battered seat with his unruly hair clutched between his fingers.

"Doctor?" Martha prompted cautiously. "Doctor, are you all right?"

The Doctor didn't lift his head. 

"We have to go back out there," he said quietly.

"What? But why, Doctor—?"

"Because," he said, looking up at last. "We were brought here for a reason. It is too late to stop this planet from destroying itself. But, there's still one thing I can do."

"What's that?"

The Doctor rose from his seat and took her hand. 

"Come with me," he said.


	3. Asleep

"She looks like she's asleep…"

Martha spoke softly, kneeling beside the body of a young girl. Unlike the other bodies littering the ruins of the old house, this one showed no sign of fire damage.

"The wall protected her," the Doctor said, his voice rather hoarse. He cleared his throat. "Solid stone. Kept her safe from the firestorm, but not the soldier's laser bolt."

"How could this have happened?" Martha smoothed the girl's amethyst hair back behind her ears, eyes burning with unshed tears. "She can't be more than nine years old. What kind of person could shoot a little girl?"

The Doctor frowned. 

"The same kind that could push a button and detonate an entire world," he said. "Fanatics. Willing to destroy themselves and their entire species in the name of an ideology no one will remember now they're gone."

Martha shook her head, her lips pursed tight.

"You said we were brought here for a reason," she said. "But, we can't help this little girl. We can't help any of them."

The Doctor looked at her, then turned his gaze to the pink-skinned child with the long, purple hair…and the singed, dogeared notebook still clutched in her arms.

"No," he said, crouching down to gently pry the notebook free, then carefully flip through its pages. "But, there's a chance this girl could still help others..."


	4. Words

Publishers were reluctant. Readers nowadays wanted escapist fiction, they argued. They wanted romance, drama, cookbooks. What profit could there be in the disjointed thoughts and fantasies of a dead child from an extinct planet?

But, the Doctor was persistent.

And in the end, he won out.

"As always," Martha Jones said, and smiled.

The Doctor looked very tired.

"Don't I wish," he replied.

It took a long time for the book to get noticed. Really noticed...beyond required reading lists for students, a couple of adapted plays, and the occasional book club review. It took a galactic war, a depression, a war, and then another war before the little girl's farewell message truly fell on hearing ears.

But once it did…


	5. The Bigger Picture

Ripples made waves, waves interference patterns, subtle, shifting, twinkling...

A stray thought influenced, a decision changed, a heart touched by empathy...

More writings, more thoughts, twigs upon branches upon trees, stemming from a common root notion...

The invisible force of a mental revolution, creeping across the generations, one open mind at at time...

*******

"Martha Jones, welcome home." 

The Doctor beamed, holding the door with theatrical flourish as she stepped out of the TARDIS. 

"It's the year 7372, and the Earth, here, is the hub of an interstellar Republic encompassing most of the Milky Way galaxy. It's an era of peace and economic prosperity, not to mention the template for what will one day become the Great and Bountiful Human Empire."

"Fantastic." Martha smiled approvingly. "But why are we here?"

"This is a very important day," the Doctor said enthusiastically, taking her hand as they bounded down an alleyway toward the bustling city center. "Not just for Earth, but for the entire galaxy."

"Oh yeah?" Martha said, intrigued. "What happened?"

The Time Lord smiled over his shoulder. 

"Oh, it's unprecedented," he said. "Absolutely unprecedented in the entire sweeping, tumultuous history of humanity. It was only noted as a fluke, a blip, barely worth a mention. But, other such days have followed. And, we've come to soak it all in."

Martha smirked. 

"So...what? You mean there's no sinister behind the scenes plotting going on – no evil genius or twisted supercomputer we have to thwart?"

"Not today," the Doctor told her, coming to an abrupt halt in front of a large holo-screen at the center of a noisy, densely crowded square. 

Martha regarded him, marveling at the difference in his manner and expression. He was usually so distant. The aloof Time Lord, as she saw him, always alone, always…somehow…sad. Wistful, nursing a wound the young medical student could never hope to heal. 

But now… Now, he was grinning like a little boy, practically giddy with energy. His unruly brown hair virtually stood on end as he bounced on the balls of his feet, impatiently awaiting the next news broadcast with wide, eager eyes.

It was a rare thing for Martha to see the Doctor this way. He looked so young, so exuberant. With a sudden twinge, she wondered if this was how he had been with Rose. Not the distant Time Lord she knew, but an eager guide, brimming with life and wonder and the promise of the universe…

"Look! Look, Martha, it's coming on!" he crowed happily, giving her hand a quick, impulsive squeeze. "You'll understand now."

"Understand what?" she asked.

"Just wait and see!" he said, turning back to the screen.

A blue-skinned woman with solid yellow eyes was speaking, but her voice was muted, her words scrolling along the bottom of the screen at a quicksilver pace. Martha found she couldn't read each word individually, she had to sort of blur her eyes and catch the sentences as they flew past. 

The Doctor didn't seem bothered, or even to notice.

"And in other news," the woman was saying, "Ms. Anthea Harper of Santa Fe, New Mexico celebrated her 200th birthday today. Mr. Halalal Columbki of the Alpha Centauri Space Base and Pfaa Phaaz, the algae colony currently based in Queensland, Australia, have both reached the impressive age of 597 Earth standard years which, according to the Guinness Book of Galactic Records, leaves them tied for oldest living sapient being."

"Guess they haven't met you," Martha teased, giving the Doctor a playful nudge. 

The 900-plus-year-old Time Lord shot her a brief look. 

"And this day is noteworthy for something else, too, isn't it Joe," the blue-skinned woman continued, turning to face a middle-aged human man seated to her left.

"Yes, it certainly is, Grikmilli," he said through his bright, newsreader smile. "The Hitchhiker's Instant-Access Encyclopedia Company has announced, and the Intergalactic Records Office has confirmed, that this day – May 22, 7372 – marks the first day in recorded human history that no one has died."

Martha's eyes widened and she glanced at the Doctor, but his attention was fully glued to the screen.

"But, can that really be true?" Grikmilli was asking when Martha managed to catch the rapid flow of the words again. "It's a big galaxy out there. When you consider all the hospitals - the accidents, fires, floods, even hold-ups—"

"I know it seems incredible," Joe said. "But, the officials have confirmed it. For the first time in human history, violence and illness has dropped to such a degree that, for a full standard day, not one person has died."

Grikmilli raised her delicately painted eyebrows and blinked her vertical eyelids at the camera. 

"Well, you heard it here first, folks," she said. "And that's it for our 'On the 8's' News Update, but we'll be back with full coverage tonight at 2300. Now, be sure to stay tuned after the break for Channel 42's exclusive coverage of the 356th Galactic Cup, presented by our own Dafydd Thomas..."

"Well?" the Doctor said eagerly, breaking Martha's concentration. 

She blinked a little to restore the moisture to her dry eyes, and let the whizzing captions scroll on without her.

"Well what?" she asked, confused.

The Doctor stared. 

"No one died, Martha!" he exclaimed. "For the first time in human history! No one died!"

"Yeah, I'll admit that's pretty good," Martha said.

The Doctor sighed and shook his head.

"What?" Martha demanded. "What is it? Am I missing something here?"

"Remember what I told you about the big picture," the Doctor said.

"Yeah, but I still don't see—"

Martha cut herself off, her memory catching up with her mouth. 

"That girl," she said. "All those months ago." 

She blinked up at the Doctor, her eyes wide. 

"Doctor…was that it, then? When you said we were sent there for a reason…?"

"It's the bigger picture, Martha Jones," the Doctor told her, his dark eyes sweeping over the throngs of people striding through the square, laughing, chatting, scowling, smiling… "But, it has to start somewhere. Like any picture, it starts with a single brush stroke, a single pixel. In this case," he pulled a slender paperback from his pocket, "in the poignant words of a frightened child. A child who refused to give up hope, even as she watched death blow up her door."

"Her final farewell," Martha said, taking the book and flipping to the end, running her hand over the smooth page. "How could she have known, Doctor? How could she have known someone would find her notebook, when she saw her planet burn?"

The Doctor shook his head.

"She didn't know. Couldn't know. But, she kept writing, if only for herself. And, in the end, her words touched people. Forced them to think. Made them take a good look at themselves through her eyes and, for once, instead of getting all defensive, a few of them realized they could change what they saw."

"So now, centuries later—"

"Call it a quirk," the Doctor said. "But, humanity finally had a day where no one died." 

He took the book back and replaced it in his coat. 

Martha smiled softly.

"Well, it certainly took long enough," she said. "But, how many people had to die for us to make it this far?"

"What counts is that you did make it," the Doctor told her, giving her hand a light, reassuring squeeze. "You make it, Martha Jones. And for me, right now, that's all that matters."

The End


End file.
